Naseeruddin Shah says ‘only failures come back to teach’ at NSD: ‘I consider it my responsibility to help these kids’ | Bollywood News
2 min readChennaiFeb 7, 2026 09:03 PM IST Bollywood veteran couple Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah are both alumni of the prestigious National School of Drama (NSD). The institute has many other renowned alumni, including Om Puri, Irrfan Khan, Anupam Kher, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Pankaj Tripathi, Neena Gupta, Piyush Mishra, and others. However, in a recent interaction, Naseeruddin and Ratna admitted that they did not learn acting from the institute. Speaking to Curtain Call With Aahana Kumra, Naseeruddin said, “There was no acting teacher worth the name at NSD when I was there.” He shared how one teacher at the institute taught him the discipline of acting, but no one taught him about the craft during his time there. “But as far as the craft of the work itself, apart from gaining experience in acting over several plays over the years, I didn’t learn anything about acting while I was at NSD,” he added. Ratna had a similar experience. She said, “Ditto, when I went to NSD, seven years later after he had passed out, …



